Avi Marie's Arc

Chapter 23 of 30

The beam still climbed through the tear in the clouds. Avi Marie watched the horns answer from the towers above. She had wanted the masters to come. Now they would. Her power ran thin at this height, and she had no wall, no ally at her back but two. The garden gave her nothing to hide behind. She turned to face the light coming down. They came from a great white cathedral floating past the rift. Its spires reached higher than any tower she had climbed. Down its long steps flowed the masters themselves, robed figures who had never once shown their faces to her. They did not hurry. They did not need to. She stood on open ground with no weapon left. "They'll circle us," Azrael said. He had followed her up with a torn robe and no crystal left to spend. His voice stayed flat. "Wait for you to fall, then take the ledger." "Let them come close," Petra said. She had climbed here by hand, a city archivist in a smudged suit, holding the ledger against her chest. Seven years she had burned proof for these same masters. Now she stood beside the angel she once hid from. "Close enough to hear." Avi Marie understood. She could not win a fight here. But the beam had already told the whole realm her name. "You want witnesses," she said. "They came out of hiding," Petra said. "So did the ones in every window." Avi Marie looked up. Along the cathedral's high walls, faces pressed to the glass. Lesser angels. Servants. The whole upper realm had seen the beam and come to look. The masters had descended in front of all of them. The lead master reached the garden floor. He held out one hand. "Give us the record," he said. "End this quietly." "There is no quiet," Avi Marie said. She raised her voice so the glass would carry it. "You killed a mortal because he saw you trade for power. You blinded me so I could not speak it. Now you stand in the open. Take the ledger, and every angel watching will know exactly why." The master's hand stopped. He glanced up at the crowded windows. His own servants stared down at him, waiting to see what he would do. Petra opened the ledger and read the name aloud again. It rang across the garden. No one struck her down. They could not, not now, not with the whole realm watching from the glass. The master lowered his hand. "Inside," he said, quiet now. "You will answer to the ones above me. Not here." Avi Marie's breath caught. She had forced them to bring her in. But the answer she wanted still sat one tier higher, behind those cathedral doors. She stepped toward the steps. The trap had opened into a deeper one.